Archive for month: August, 2020

Technique finds software bugs in surgical robots

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Surgical robots could make some types of surgery safer and more effective, but proving that the software controlling these machines works as intended is problematic. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have demonstrated that methods for reliably detecting software bugs and ultimately verifying software safety can be applied successfully to this breed of robot.
They used theorem-proving techniques to analyse a control algorithm for a research robot that would help a surgeon perform surgery at the base of the skull. Their method identified a safety flaw that could enable a scalpel or other surgical tool to go dangerously astray in this area, where the eye orbits, ear canals and major arteries and nerves are closely spaced and vulnerable to injury. It also guided development of a new algorithm and verified that the new controller was safe and reliable.

‘These techniques are going to change how people build robotic surgery systems,’ predicted APL’s Yanni Kouskoulas, who led the research study with Andr

Study finds copper reduces 58 percent of healthcare-acquired infections

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New research has revealed that the use of Antimicrobial Copper surfaces in hospital rooms can reduce the number of healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) by 58% as compared to patients treated in Intensive Care Units with non-copper touch surfaces. In the United States, 1 out of every 20 hospital patients develops an HAI, resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths per year. Although numerous strategies have been developed to decrease these infections, Antimicrobial Copper is the only strategy that works continuously, has been scientifically proven to be effective and doesn’t depend on human behaviour, according to a recently study.
‘The implications of this study are critical,’ said Dr. Harold Michels, Senior Vice President of the Copper Development Association (CDA). ‘Until now, the only attempts to reduce HAIs have required hand hygiene, increased cleaning and patient screening, which don’t necessarily stop the growth of these bacteria the way copper alloy surfaces do. We now know that copper is the game-changer: it has the potential to save lives.’
The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, was conducted in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) of three major hospitals: The Medical University of South Carolina, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. To determine the impact of copper alloy surfaces on the rate of HAIs, copper-surfaced objects were placed in each ICU, where patients are at higher risk due to the severity of their illnesses, invasive procedures and frequent interaction with healthcare workers. Patients were randomly placed in available rooms with or without copper alloy surfaces, and the rates of HAIs were compared. A total of 650 patients and 16 rooms (8 copper and 8 standard) were studied between July 12, 2010 and June 14, 2011.
Results of this study found that Antimicrobial Copper can continuously kill 83% of bacteria that cause HAIs within two hours, including strands resistant to antibiotics. The study compared copper to equivalent non-copper touch surfaces during active patient care between routine cleaning and sanitising.
‘Copper alloy surfaces offer an alternative way to reduce the increasing number of HAIs, without having to worry about changing healthcare worker behaviour,’ said Dr. Michael Schmidt, Vice Chairman of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina and one of the authors of the study. ‘Because the antimicrobial effect is a continuous property of copper, the regrowth of deadly bacteria is significantly less on these surfaces, making a safer environment for hospital patients.’
In study results, 46 patients developed an HAI, while 26 patients became colonised with MRSA or VRE. Overall, the proportion of patients who developed an HAI was significantly lower among those assigned to intensive care rooms with objects fabricated using copper alloys. There are currently hundreds of Antimicrobial Copper healthcare-related products available today, including IV poles, stretchers, tray tables and door hardware. EurekAlert

Take a kidney transplant now or wait for a better one? Hopkins researchers create ‘decision’ tool

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Johns Hopkins scientists have created a free, Web-based tool to help patients decide whether it’s best to accept an immediately available, but less-than-ideal deceased donor kidney for transplant, or wait for a healthier one in the future.
Historically, the researchers say, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to accurately quantify the risk of accepting a deceased-donor kidney that may have been infected by hepatitis C, as compared to waiting what could be months or years for a better organ. There is a 5 to 15 percent chance of dying every year on the waiting list. Often, organs that may have been at risk of infection are thrown away and never transplanted.
In a new study the Johns Hopkins researchers showed there are some types of patients for whom survival benefit outweighs the risks of accepting a possibly infected organ. They then developed a Web-based mathematical model to help predict which patients they would be. The easy-to-use website can be found at www.transplantmodels.com/ird.
‘Because the supply of the healthiest donor organs is too small, patients need to consider all organ offers or risk dying while waiting for an organ. But this is a very hard decision, and many people turn down transplant offers that, in reality, would provide them significant benefit. Often they would have done much better taking the organ at hand than waiting for the next available one,’ says study leader Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. ‘This is the most important decision of a transplant candidate’s life, and we have developed a novel tool we believe can help patients make the best choice.’ EurekAlert

UCLA researchers find nanodiamonds could improve effectiveness of breast cancer treatment

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Nanodiamonds bound to the chemotherapy drug epirubicin are enclosed within a lipid membrane and coupled to antibodies specific to hard-to-treat tumors.
Recently, doctors have begun to categorise breast cancers into four main groups according to the genetic makeup of the cancer cells. Which category a cancer falls into generally determines the best method of treatment.

But cancers in one of the four groups

Better support needed for dads as well as mums after difficult births

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Severe and life-threatening complications in pregnancy can have a big impact on fathers as well as mothers.
That’s one of the key findings of work by Oxford University researchers who spoke to couples who had been through this, in compiling a new resource for the award-winning patient website www.healthtalkonline.org.
The new pages covering life-threatening conditions in childbirth and pregnancy have just been launched.
Other points that emerged from the interviews included the huge difference that little examples of thoughtful care from doctors and midwives could make to how couples coped when emergency care was needed around the time of the birth of their child.
Examples included an anaesthetist who stepped out of theatre to show the waiting father a photo of his new baby on an iPhone; staff who kept a diary of the newborn baby’s day in a neonatal unit that was in a different hospital to the mother; and a midwife who greeted a woman with major bleeding arriving in an ambulance with a monitor so she could hear her baby’s heartbeat and know nothing had happened to him.
Severe complications in labour and childbirth aren’t common. But perhaps because of this, there can be difficulties for couples in getting the support they might need or finding others that have gone through similar experiences. And for doctors and midwives who don’t see many such cases, they may not be aware of what follow-up care could help. Oxford University

Edible electronics for medical device industry

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It sounds futuristic, but today Carnegie Mellon University researchers are developing edible electronic devices that can be implanted in the body to improve patient care.
‘We are creating electronically active medical devices that can be implanted in the body,’ said Christopher Bettinger, an assistant professor in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at CMU. ‘The idea is for a patient to consume a pill that encapsulates the device.’

Bettinger, along with Jay Whitacre, a professor of materials science and engineering, is creating edible power sources for medical devices that can be taken orally using materials found in the daily diet.
‘Our design involves flexible polymer electrodes and a sodium ion electrochemical cell, which allows us to fold the mechanism into an edible pill that encapsulates the device,’ Bettinger said.
CMU researchers report that the edible device could be programmed and deployed in the gastrointestinal tract or the small intestine depending upon packaging. Once the battery packaging is in place, Bettinger’s team would activate the battery.

Bettinger reports that the battery could power biosensors to measure biomarkers or monitor gastric problems. The battery also could be used to stimulate damaged tissue or help in targeted drug delivery for certain types of cancer.
‘There’s so much out there we can do with this novel approach to medical devices,’ said Bettinger, a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research for his innovative work on advanced materials for next-generation implanted medical devices.
Bettinger has worked for more than a decade at the interface of materials science and biomedical engineering. Some of his innovative technologies include new synthetic materials that mimic the natural properties of soft tissue and biodegradable electronics that could usher in a new era of electronically active implants. Carnegie Mellon University

ECT can restore quality of life for some severely depressed patients

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Patients whose severe depression goes into remission for six months following electroconvulsive therapy report a quality of life similar to that of healthy individuals, researchers say.

‘If we can get you into remission, you get this big, big improvement in quality of life at six months such that our patients

X-ray approach to track surgical devices and minimise radiation exposure

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Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) have developed a new tool to help surgeons use X-rays to track devices used in ‘minimally invasive’ surgical procedures while also limiting the patient

Team deploys hundreds of tiny untethered surgical tools in first animal biopsies

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By using swarms of untethered grippers, each as small as a speck of dust, Johns Hopkins engineers and physicians say they have devised a new way to perform biopsies that could provide a more effective way to access narrow conduits in the body as well as find early signs of cancer or other diseases.

In two recent peer-reviewed journal articles, the team reported successful animal testing of the tiny tools, which require no batteries, wires or tethers as they seize internal tissue samples. The devices are called ‘mu-grippers,’ incorporating the Greek letter that represents the term for ‘micro.’ Instead of relying on electric or pneumatic power, these star-shaped tools are autonomously activated by the body

Study examines methods, procedures for improved diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy

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For women with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding during early pregnancy, patient history and clinical examination alone are insufficient to indicate or eliminate the possibility of ectopic pregnancy, while transvaginal sonography appears to be the single best diagnostic method for evaluating suspected ectopic pregnancy, according to an analysis of previous studies.
The rapid identification and accurate diagnosis of women who may have an ectopic pregnancy is critically important for reducing the maternal illness and death associated with this condition. Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of first-trimester pregnancy-related death, responsible for up to 6 percent of maternal mortality during early gestation, according to background information in the article. ‘Fewer than half of the women with an ectopic pregnancy have the classically described symptoms of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. In fact, these symptoms are more likely to indicate miscarriage.’
John R. Crochet, M.D., of the Center of Reproductive Medicine, Webster, Texas and colleagues conducted a study to systematically review the accuracy and precision of the patient history, clinical examination, readily available laboratory values, and sonography in the diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy in women with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding during early pregnancy. The researchers conducted a search of the medical literature and identified 14 studies with 12,101 patients the met the criteria for inclusion in the analysis.
The authors found that presence of an adnexal (structures near the uterus, such as the ovaries and the Fallopian tubes) mass in the absence of an intrauterine pregnancy on transvaginal sonography, and the physical examination findings of cervical motion tenderness, an adnexal mass, and adnexal tenderness all increase the likelihood of ectopic pregnancy. ‘A lack of adnexal abnormalities on transvaginal sonography decreases the likelihood of ectopic pregnancy. Existing studies do not establish a single serum human chorionic gonadotropin [hCG; a hormone] level that is diagnostic of ectopic pregnancy.’
‘Women with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding during early pregnancy may have an ectopic pregnancy. This systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis confirms that the patient history and clinical examination alone are insufficient to indicate or eliminate the possibility of ectopic pregnancy. In a hemodynamically stable patient, the appropriate evaluation includes transvaginal sonography and quantitative (serial) serum hCG testing. Patients with signs and symptoms of excessive blood loss or hemodynamic collapse should immediately have gynecological evaluation.’ EurekAlert

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